How do you improve performance in large sessions?

So I recently started mixing in Ableton instead of Pro Tools. When mixing some of these big 80 track session Ableton just completely falls apart for me. I have an i7 macbook pro with 8gbs of Ram so I think my comp will be able to handle it.

Are there any special settings people use for mixing or is this just the nature of the beast? I've been amazed with Live so far but I'm really starting to see some major weaknesses in the pro mixing department.

"Set your mix at a lower Sample rate until happy then up it to required rate when you Export" does this really help ease off the cpu?

5 years ago|
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famouslast

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Everything above for improving performance is solid advice. Additionally, in Live 8 I have encountered massive problems when you try to group many tracks together. I reproduced the error and now I get around this by properly grouping my tracks before I get to final mix. Additionally, I exported all of the 50+ tracks (with processing) to basically create 50+ new files and then created a new project and imported them all in as AIF or WAVs. By doing this you can add any final processing and then export your WAV for mastering.

I'd like to also comment on using Ableton after coming from Pro Tools. My thesis here is that I think they are "better together", and Ableton 8 and Pro Tools 9 seem to be an ideal combination since all versions after that of both DAWs are bulky and have decreased performance capacity.

If you aren't creating a DJ set, but instead using Ableton as you would ProTools then I recommend using Ableton for sound design and arrangement and mixing in ProTools. Engineers and Producers are very happy to get organized well labeled files when they import them into Pro Tools so just take off the pre-pended song name from every track and order each individual track in the way that you'd like to see it in Pro Tools Session View.

If you really want to get meticulous for your Producer in Pro Tools, then export all your tracks processed, naming the song "p-". This will prepend the files with that name. Then turn all the processing off and export those same tracks Dry in a different folder naming the song "d-". Now you can hand off the processed files and dry files separately and if you want you can combine them in one ProTools session.

3 years ago|
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